The Birth of My Daughter: The Best Laid Plans…

in general this should have been the
happiest day of my life and it was for me one of the most tragic one of the most heartbreaking one of the most oldest wrong it was absolutely terrible and that has a lot to do with the human condition and you know is a lot to do with the bureaucratic and political context in France see how we did all that research we had all the best laid plans and from my perspective it ended up being a soul destroy disaster anyway about us yen this is very much take two on my attempting to do a kind of birth story video with my girlfriend take one she was working from a list of questions and the questions were intelligent interesting I'm now let read the whole list of questions so you did actually ask some intelligent questions of that but for me this is really a lesson in why I do unscripted videos why it's really important to do on spirit videos because it's funny because I think the format of that didn't work because you were working from a program script you're not really responding to what I'm telling you so I'm gonna try to do a more spontaneous video about how my daughter is born what I learned from the birth the background of this just is we watch together this other vegan youtubers channel vegan mom that vegan mom's name is obvious is not her names name of jail at that vegan mom and that being a mom and I go way back like car seats she's known we've known each other no one about each other by YouTube for a couple of years and she just gave birth to twins in the past she gave birth to her son blah blah blah she tells her own story on her channel you can go see that there if you'll wanna um you know so my story you know with the birth of my daughter is from my perspective really tragic and really terrible was really horrible and I've gotta say that in general you know it said to set the tone for this video however you know there are some things other people could learn from of them I'd be useful and it's really the story of two people you know Mia Mac's wife who did a lot of planning and a lot of preparation and despite all that planning and preparation despite all the thought care that went into it kind of it turned out horribly for me anyway right so look so ex tempore I mean for you look you you've got questions covering a whole listed what for you is the number one question not in chronological sequence but in terms of depth or importance if what is you know more question about you know where my daughter comes from that way yeah I think the number one question was the first one that I listed basically like why did you choose France and also you know then you moved to Taiwan you know you chose that place they were going to start raising so what made you decide on France and then Taiwan like you know these processions that went into so those are two two very different stories the question of where we would give birth was a huge pile of research we worked against an amazingly long list of options that we we researched primarily through Google you know primary with internet I mean and no it's actually significant also we did in some cases rely on human opinions we were lied on talking to and asking people's opinions who seemed like they know what they're talking about and that can be way more misleading than Google you know sometimes Google can give you much better information then you know a person who for example you still live in Perpignan but like you know we got in touch with a guy and asked him guy but you know oh well what is it like living in Perpignan that's a city in France we ended up you know raising my daughter for the first so many months of her life um so yeah primarily Google based research but then also reaching up to and asking people we knew who knew about these things and some of that advice was good and some of it was bad but we considered having my daughter born in Taiwan Thailand you know various places in Asia my wife's work or my work had connected us to we considered United States and Canada but obviously Canada even just within Canada there'd be many options and then within Europe and we looked at actually a long list of obscure and remote places islands that are controlled as French territory because my ex-wife is a French citizen and some of the islands that are controlled as as US territory and so on and places like Mexico we weren't really interested in but we were finding information they knew that they had good hospitals that could handle this so that was really a process that was a brainstorming process really starting from a blank sheet of paper and a lot of the research was about how did the hospital system work in the given place how did the insurance system work because because wait just keep in mind if you're doing this this is really where one emphasized the research for the people I'm I left a comment below that meat vegan mom's video below her video I said look the main factor you can control is where you give birth you know like so if you choose to give birth in Mexico or choose give birth in France totally different scenario institutionally but in all these places you had to research one what's gonna happen if it's a normal healthy birth with no problems no complications to what's gonna happen if there are problems too because then terms of health insurance money cost even just where you're gonna stay right like where are you gonna be living if things go wrong and you know but yet cost is certainly a factor and then three how are we gonna live for the immediate period of weeks and months after the the child is born because we were doing this as there's just two people alone in the world no aunts and uncles involved no parents involved her parents not involved my parents not involved and so on so that was the scenario and again I encourage others to do what we did in that sense I encourage others to look at the whole world because especially if you're American it's probably gonna cost you the same amount everywhere it's gonna save you money I mean it's probably cheaper for you to give birth outside of the United States and in states if you're an American citizen I'm a Canadian citizen max wife has dual citizenship both American and French and we did all this research and in the end what that brought us to was specifically Perpignan France I figured you had done plenty of research because you research everything but you know it's unfortunate that you went through all that research and nevertheless had such negative experience we fended up in a situation I was unhappy with right but you us to course the second question is why we have been why did we end up in Taiwan after that yeah and that's a totally different story because we broke our backs well I did all the heavy lifting I mean my wife was pregnant but I mean I got and assembled all the furniture we moved in we created this home to raise our daughter and in Perpignan France and Perpignan is in French Catalonia right on the border with Spanish Catalonia Catalonia is now in the process of becoming an independent country it seems fascinating political situation but we put in all this work to get set up there and just because the immigration office in that city in France was garbage should I say it was corrupt should I say it was incompetent should I use other more colorful words because of a couple bad people in one go bureaucratic office it was impossible for us to stay there so that was a paper work created situation there were bad people in positions of authority in one office in the government in France and we did formally complain anymore highly educated highly literate people we saw to what extent we could fight the system then it was very clear that because these few people in this one bureaucratic office in France were terrible people and running a terrible office so well either we have to exit France completely and then re-enter France and restart the immigration process with new paperwork like pretend we never arrived in France at all pretended we didn't just give birth to a baby in France start with new paperwork in a different city in a different province in France you could do that if that was allowed that wouldn't be breaking the law that's that's the law you can restart with a new sheet of paper or we leave France entirely give up on France as the plan now if you do that again if you've been in one city in France where the immigration process was incompetent corrupts bad etc why would you think it would be better elsewhere you know again you can do some Google research but we had no reason that we could go through the same tragic scenario all over again and still end up homeless having to flee with our baby in our possessions remember when you have to move everything you own by airplane and everything you only includes a newborn infant you own almost nothing because you have the baby of the diapers of the baby of all the things you need for the baby I mean you know I didn't I didn't have a own a single book you know what I mean I lost everything I had my own you know you don't even can't even bring many adult clothes you're very limited luggage allowance is devoted entirely to the baby and the things the baby needs first and foremost right so you know we'd already gone through that in effect going from Canada to Perpignan really hard to create a home and nothing in Perpignan you know rents rent an empty apartment furnish it and in France it is very hard to get the electricity and light set up and phone it was a real you that was a big struggle in France some countries in others know it is what it is and then we were losing all that we're leaving like refugees and the question is well if we're going to leave like refugees do you want to come back to France do this all over again and also you have to deal with health insurance paper working on this again for the baby of course or do you want to give up on France entirely and we made the fateful decision at that point for totally different reasons to give up on France and go to Taiwan so yeah and I could say more about that but this is this is about the birth right and not about the relocation after the birth but these two are useful warnings or useful advice or people think about you may not you may not be able to anticipate that you may not be able to think through those kinds of consequences yeah and I'm sure your decision had to do with you know I know that you probably factored in a lot of different reasons for deciding on France ultimately but I think probably the health insurance is a big deal for why he chose I think honestly the number one concern was my ex-wife's mental stability and happiness it was a very unhappy time of her life she'd just quit her job in Canada so no you know we got health insurance in Canada we can afford we can afford health care in Mexico you wouldn't Thailand another great option financially very affordable is it as a foreigner in Thailand you could share okay that go really no big deal no I mean ultimately you got to think about me for the mother this would be true in any relationship it was maybe especially sure my relationship what she's gonna go through in the first three months you know be okay the the couple last couple months of pregnancy giving birth in the first few months the baby's life there are there a lot of factors there and indeed you know at that time my ex-wife was quite estranged from her family she did not want to be too close to her family so that was another question was okay do you you don't want to be too close but do you want to be too far and that was that was also a choice so we were close enough that it was possible for my ex-wife to you know have some family members over and not others kind of thing she could control how much the baby you know was in contact with the other family members and you know it was it was easier to manage her estranged relations but yeah we were very much alone we were man wife baby no aunts no uncle's no grandparents nobody else has any kind of support it's tough it's tough but you know she quit her job and she destroyed my whole educational career situation so I had nothing you know so we weren't a position or so well we only had two people but we had two people who were able to devote 24 hours a day seven days a week to the baby and that's totally different for having two parents or even just one of them as a job let alone two of them as a job so we were both 24/7 stay-at-home parents for the first 10 months of my daughter's life and that works that you can do so literally you know if my if my wife was with the baby I could go and do food shopping if I was playing with the baby my wife could cook food or vice versa I did do a lot of cooking for that reason if she's breastfeeding the baby I can cook and whatever you know but know at any given time one of the two of you has to have both your hands full with a baby and that's you know that becomes the rhythm of your days I was beautiful are the beautiful rhythm to live by you know obviously that element is a happy memory for me the first 10 months I spent with my daughter and I was with my daughter when she took her first steps and made her first noises shouldn't say any real words but she was you know to me and all that stuff ya know it's its magic you know and changing diapers and all that kind of stuff but you know to give an example when my ex-wife went out to see a therapist you know of her so she's away for a couple of hours either that was very very hard just to have those even just a couple of hours to really be one parent rather than to cooperate it's very very hard so and you know a babies that age they they do always want to be around the breast they want to access to breast feeding one time even when they're not breastfeeding they'll start to panic that's not around so it's pumping plenty of quality time with my daughter you know alone without my wife but I know because my wife was sleeping you know she just nap or fall asleep at different times but you know just every so often that's straight up evolutionary biology the baby wants to check is the breasts nearby because in terms of how they've evolved that's there only source of nutrition if the baby is separated from breastfeeding it'll it'll die so it's a very strong survival and say they want to check that that's around you know visually or by smell or whatever it is so yeah don't become very unhappy very soon if they don't have access to that important one to me is like how you decided on the plan for giving birth like what research went into it what how did you make your decisions because well this is a good question but like it's all irrelevant if your doctor is an [ __ ] like you know you can sit in your apartment and drop my plant my birth plan yeah you know like Wow how was your doctor gonna see it and if you maybe you have a dog who's like oh that's a good birth plan where they really care and really listen and you know again we did take one of this video so this is stuff we never talked about before but she already heard this like we went to one hospital with one doctor and the guy was such an [ __ ] that he banned us from the hospital he didn't wash his hands amid all these concerns but he seemed drugged up he seemed like he was at least on antidepressants at night if not other drugs he was just really looping out if he was a young guy he was not an elderly doctor it was a young guy and it was like so dude are you on like a double dose of Prozac and like maybe a chaser of like whiskey and cocaine but he was Lee he was seemed really out of it he wasn't washing his hands we should move but he banned us like after we met that doctor we met and as it was like do you think we can put up with this doctor and like you know we were starting to think of it then we didn't have to think about it cuz he banned us from that hospital as a private oh okay yeah yeah okay so that hospitals that you know like we had to deal with such extremists such extreme such know such extreme hostility and such extreme and competence from doctors and midwives and what have you know so okay good question I was just in mid-sentence but like you know like I think that was really that was the Oz but we did end up giving birth in so at the very end of the story we got a lot of hostility there from the doctors and nurses because of because although probably some of the hostilities started because we showed up there with a midwife there that part of France they really think well if you use a midwife your anti-science your auntie modern medicine and then the veganism they also viewed that way like I said if we were members of a religious cult and were against modern medicine and the irony was we were way more Pro science Pro modern medicine than any of the nurses and any of the doctors a lot of them were fruit loops I mean anyone can become a you know a neonatal nurse or everyone can become a labor and delivery nurse I mean you know like the some of these people are really stupid and some of them will sit down and tell you they're insane you know just a mainstream pseudoscience crap believing in believing in homeopathy and crap like that you know I mean you know so yeah I mean you get to meet the nurses and those long hours and each one has their own personality some are more free there's the friendly airhead and there's the not too friendly one it's a bit smarter and so on you got to know which of those personalities but yeah I mean if you ask about do you have a birth plan well sure we had all kinds of druthers we all kinds of preferences but then can you convince any doctors or nurses to it to work with you one of the ones that was a breaking point for the surgeon so the you know because there are doctors at different levels but the the most elite doctors the one who in that ward was the the surgeons she was that she was the head surgeon on duty at that time right she was the highest ranking doctor and there was some lower doctrine she just felt her ego tremendously challenges we asked a totally legit question about the placenta and the cutting the umbilical cord that that not be rushed that you give the umbilical cord enough time to finish doing its thing before you you cut the umbilical cord now it turns that was probably irrelevant in my daughter's case because my daughter was a hundred and ten percent full-term she got the full full term as opposed to being premature or even just a hundred percent she she was you know when she came out of the womb she didn't look like a newborn baby she really didn't she looked like a four month old baby already yeah she everything was perfect the eyelashes and the amber it was all kind of fully formed it was it looked like a fake baby it's like when you watch a movie or a soap opera or something and they're like oh here's your newly developed baby and it looks fake it's like this it was that fake or morally they handed me this baby okay there's nothing there was so that was probably relevant but in any case but we just raised this issue said well you know we're aware and this is totally on a modern medical science basis there's this issue with you know cutting the umbilical cord immediately as opposed to just giving it time to finish transferring fluids before you before you cut it and the doctor was so freaked out by that her it was a female doctor her sense of ego was really really challenged you know so I mean the the other dark the doctor banned us from the other hospital I didn't even ask what he just said I seemed to self coughing I was asking him really simple scientific questions about the procedures because we've done all this reading you did all this reading and research so they go so you do it do you do it this method or this method you like a lot of things there are like two or three different ways to do them oh so you do you do birth this way or this way you know like what kind of bed what kind of pick you know there's definitely that you want to know you know there were different approaches to do you give birth on a 45 degree angle or what you know what I mean and he was his ego was just too challenged by me asking these things in a completely down-to-earth way so this is the French you know medical establishment ego thing and then that female doctor also just that one question she was totally freaked out and you could tell also these days you could tell she was freaked out and then she went away and googled it and then she came back after having done sir you know you could tell how things check cuz after you have to really like if she realized there actually was a scientific reason trust me asking us but she was that was terrible she treated us like garbage and most of the nurses did too there were a couple of nurses that were good to us and I do remember them also as unique personality was unbelievable the level of hostility and I think I think I've already told this anything on on YouTube but at one point you know the the doctor or said to us well if they said to us all these denigrating things they assumed we were from a third-world country for no reason they say things like oh well how do they do things in your country it was like I'm from Toronto Canada like where do you think we're from my wife is like she's from nice like you know what I mean like and you know one of the other things was like you know what doctor just replied think it was on this issue it was like well you know um you know I'm I'm a medical doctor and my diploma is from Paris 12 or whatever you know she named the University you know where her diplomas from she's like what kind of education do you get this directive and you know this is my wife is almost in labor at this point this is someone in pain this is someone going into labor and my wife said back to her I have a PhD from Cambridge University but it's just like the level of contentment was really said in an insulting contemptuous way and people are being insulting and contemptuous towards my life and in one case violent in one case I had to prevent a nurse from assaulting my wife and this is someone who's in pain and in exhausted obviously the sleep deprivation it's you know epic you know you don't sleep for 48 hours and you're given prison regular you know I mean so you know that was it was really awful it was like I say I mean in general this should have been the happiest day of my life and it was for me one of the most tragic one of the most heartbreaking one of the most soul destroying it was absolutely terrible and that has a lot to do with the human condition and you know always a lot to do with the bureaucratic and political context in France so yeah we did all that research we had all the best laid plans and from my perspective it ended up being a soul destroy disaster anyway and sure if I if I could change anything I'd make I'd make different decisions about everything yeah cuz that's 20 minute video we could talk more why don't we wrap it up there okay good so that was my birth story the video Banas yen